The Beatles – Page 6 – { feuilleton }

Design as virus 18: Sound Effects

BBC Sound Effects No 1 (1969). Design by Roy Curtis-Bramwell.

I used to own this album, the first in a series of sound effects collections from the BBC tape library intended for use by musicians, theatre technicians and anyone else who might need a recording of a thunderstorm, fire alarm or creaking door. Going through my diminished stock of vinyl recently reminded me that I got rid of my rather battered copy some time ago. Now that we can sample any sound we come across these library albums are a lot less useful than they were in the analogue era. One result of their ubiquity was that some of the sounds became distractingly familiar; I still can’t listen to Hawkwind’s Warrior on the Edge of Time album without recognising all the cues (wind, seagulls, etc) borrowed from this collection.

Sound Affects (1980) by The Jam. Design by Bill Smith with The Jam. Photography by Martyn Goddard & Andrew Rosen.

And speaking of borrowings, the cover design has proved as durable as the sounds. The Jam purloined the grid design and the title for their fourth album in 1980, although the florid typeface of the original was evidently too circusy for the group’s Mod sensibilities. The music inside also tips into pastiche, this being the album featuring Start!, Paul Weller’s plundering of The Beatles’ Taxman.

Good Vibrations (2013). Design by Julian House.

Roy Curtis-Bramwell’s grid of photos and drawings was reworked recently by retro-master Julian House in one of a number of poster designs for Good Vibrations, a BBC feature film. House’s designs for the Ghost Box CDs also feature a similar grid arrangement of enigmatic details in their booklet artwork. I hadn’t considered until now that the Ghost Box details may have their origin in the Sound Effects covers.

Detail from the sleeve of Seven Songs (1982) by 23 Skidoo. Design by Neville Brody.

All of which had me trying to think of other examples of this idea. The only one that came to mind was the row of seven symbols on Neville Brody’s sleeve for the first 23 Skidoo album. Brody said these don’t necessarily relate to the seven tracks on the album although it’s possible to view them that way. (The running dog appeared later on Brody’s design for the Throbbing Gristle album box.) As usual, if you know of any further examples then please leave a comment.

There’s more about the BBC albums (and pictures of the rest of the series) here.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive

The Fool album covers

The Fool (1968).

Many people know the work of design collective The Fool even if they couldn’t tell you the name or the names of any of the individuals involved. The accelerated career trajectory of Dutch artists Marijke Koger and Simon Posthuma took them from a hippie enclave on the isle of Ibiza in 1966, to London and work for The Beatles throughout 1967 thanks to their distinctive brand of rainbow-hued psychedelia. Marijke Koger says the name The Fool was chosen after they met Crowley-obsessed blues singer Graham Bond who introduced them to the Tarot deck. Barry Finch and Josje Leeger later joined Koger and Posthuma. For The Beatles the group created the short-lived mural for the Apple boutique in Baker Street (removed after complaints), the decoration on John Lennon’s piano, and the inner sleeve for the Sgt Pepper album. The gatefold interior of the album was going to incorporate a Fool painting but Robert Fraser apparently persuaded the band to replace this with a group photo. The Fool themselves (and their decor) appear in the Beatles-produced feature film, Wonderwall (1968).

Proposed interior for the Sgt Pepper album (1967).

Given all this sudden visibility it’s surprising they weren’t more in demand for album cover designs although they were also busy producing florid outfits for other groups. The Beatles clothes on the All You Need is Love broadcast are Fool creations. Of the album covers, the one for The Incredible String Band is probably the most well-known. This small collection reminds me I still haven’t heard Evolution by The Hollies. The work on that cover led to a collaboration with Graham Nash on an album by The Fool (and session musicians) in 1968. The collective split up in 1969 with Marijke Koger and Simon Posthuma relocating to California.

• Marijke Koger-Dunham’s site
• Simon Posthuma’s site

Sgt Pepper inner sleeve.

The 5000 Spirits Or The Layers Of The Onion (1967) by The Incredible String Band.

Evolution (1967) by The Hollies. Clothes and design by The Fool, photo by Karl Ferris.

Picknick (1967) by Boudewijn De Groot.

Move (1968) by The Move.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Through the Wonderwall

The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film

The Beatles’ second feature, Help!, was released on Blu-ray last month. The origin of the film’s visual humour and frenetic style can be found in this short directed by Richard Lester over two weekends in 1959, a collaboration between Lester, Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and others. It may be nothing more than ten minutes of sight gags but it was enough for The Beatles to seek out Lester as director of their first two features. (Leo McKern, the actor in the opening shot, also appears in Help!) Considering the subsequent influence of those films—from The Monkees’ TV show on into numerous pop videos—this little film is very influential indeed. Watch it here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Petulia film posters

The Sea of Monsters

The German definite article has unfortunate implications when applied to a group of Brits, but if we overlook this detail the poster makes an interesting contrast with its US counterpart. Where the American design depicts all the film’s main characters, Heinz Edelmann’s painting concentrates almost solely on the creatures from the Sea of Monsters with no Blue Meanies in sight. As is often the case with film posters, both designs give a slightly different impression whilst being accurate in their selective representations. Yellow Submarine was reissued on DVD and Blu-ray last year. It looks and sounds marvellous.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Tomorrow Never Knows
• Yellow Submarine comic books
• A splendid time is guaranteed for all
• Heinz Edelmann
• Please Mr. Postman
• All you need is…

My White Bicycle

My White Bicycle (1967), poster by Hapshash and the Coloured Coat. Too risqué for EMI.

In what passes here for spare time I’ve been working on a private project that concerns events in London during a single week in 1967. I won’t elaborate for now but the research has been fun, and has led down byways where it’s easy to get lost in a profusion of historic detail. The International Times archive is a great time-sink if you want to see London’s psychedelic culture evolving from one week to the next. Oz magazine covered much of the same ground but in broader strokes; IT being a weekly paper was the closest thing the underground of the time had to a journal of record which means you’ll find things there which weren’t reported anywhere else.

International Times, Volume 1, issue 13, 19/05/1967.

A brief item about a poster for the debut single by Tomorrow caught my eye, the artwork being an early piece by Hapshash and the Coloured Coat (Michael English and Nigel Waymouth) who we here discover were briefly known by another name:

MY WHITE BICYCLE

EMI join the long and growing list of those self-censors who still believe that the younger generation are going to continue to support them. The above poster for the Tomorrow record, MY WHITE BICYCLE, was rejected by EMI on the grounds that the titties might provoke “complaints from certain organizations…” So Jacob and the Coloured Coat (Mick English and Nigel Weymouth [sic]) put on their crocheted boots and manufactured a poster design from every phallic image they could. Subliminal pornography triumphed where open indecency had failed and the prick within sustains where the exposed breast falters.

Tomorrow were one of the first British psychedelic bands. My White Bicycle is their most memorable song but the rest of their self-titled debut album still holds up today. Ace guitarist Steve Howe became a lot more famous in Yes a few years later, while drummer Twink was in a host of bands in the late 60s and early 70s, Hawkwind included. My White Bicycle sounds superficially like a typical piece of psych whimsy à la Pink Floyd’s Bike (both songs were recorded at Abbey Road) but according to Twink there’s an anarchist subtext:

“My White Bicycle” was written out of what was actually going on in Amsterdam. One of the owners of Granny Takes a Trip, Nigel Weymouth [sic], had gone there and come back with a Provos badge which he gave to me. They were kind of like a student anarchist group that believed everything should be free. In fact, they had white bicycles in Amsterdam and they used to leave them around the town. And if you were going somewhere and you needed to use a bike, you’d just take the bike and you’d go somewhere and just leave it. Whoever needed the bikes would take them and leave them when they were done.

What would have been dismissed as pure utopianism now looks like prescience when bike-sharing schemes have become a reality. As to the redrawn poster, there’s a copy here which is described as very rare, hence its absence from other Hapshash galleries. Not really as phallic as the IT report implies; Aubrey Beardsley got away with a lot more priapic subterfuge in the 1890s when the strictures were also more severe.

My White Bicycle (1967), the replacement poster by Hapshash and the Coloured Coat.

On the same page of IT there’s a brief announcement that The Beatles will have a new album out in June, something entitled Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. That album also gave EMI a headache with both Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds and A Day In The Life being accused by “certain organisations” of promoting drugs. If the record company could have seen the greater headache that was coming less than ten years later from Malcolm McLaren and his King’s Road scallywags they might not have been so uptight.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Hapshash Takes a Trip
• Michael English, 1941–2009
• The Look presents Nigel Waymouth
• The New Love Poetry